Instead of a bidding-up auction, I proposed that everyone offer what they wanted to for any TLD, and the top 25 simply won. This goes along better with the "make the root uninteresting" than schemes that involve high-stakes bidding.

May I remind everyone of the decision by the IAHC who also wanted to do this, but realized it was a Really Bad Idea. It's one of the few things they got right:

"With regard to the lottery mechanism, Mr Crocker conceded that the selection of registrars, all of whom must first meet an objective set of business and technical criteria, may not be ideal, but said this mechanism was finally favoured by the Committee because it was fair and equitable. An auction giving the right to become a registrar to the highest bidder would unfairly favour wealthy companies, said Mr Crocker, while selection of registrars by the Committee or another body would have been fraught with the possibility of legal complications."

"A 2-month period in which the winning names would be announced, and possibly, challenged on intellectual property or confusion grounds. We propose ICANN’s uniform dispute resolution procedure be adapted to resolve future TLD disputes."

Milton - you know MUCH better than that. YOU KNOW - everything is confusingly similar. Even the TLD examples you give .mobi, .health and .dns are all confusingly similar to trademarks in the USA - I did not bother to check any other country.